Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Alice Hoffman
Dedication
Title Page
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Part Two
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Part Three
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Alice Hoffman is the author of thirteen novels, including At Risk, White Horses, Turtle Moon, Practical Magic, The River King and, most recently, Blue Diary, many of which have been bestsellers in the USA and Germany, and she has also written screenplays. Alice Hoffman is married with two sons, and lives in Massachusetts.
For countless kindnesses and twenty years of generosity and support the author wishes to thank Elaine Markson.
March Murray returns to the small town where she grew up for a funeral and finds herself being drawn back into an intense and dangerous love affair which she had thought was over, a love affair which threatens her marriage, her family and even her own identity. Brilliantly evoking the tempo of small-town life and the mysterious, marshy countryside all around, this is a beautifully written, engaging and disturbing novel which draws the reader right inside a consuming love affair and its history, and the ripples it causes. And at the same time it conjures up an unforgetable cast of characters – both hilariously funny and touchingly sad – delicately exploring a network of overlapping relationships, each with its own secrets and surprises.
Property Of
The Drowning Season
Angel Landing
White Horses
Fortune’s Daughter
Illumination Night
At Risk
Seventh Heaven
Turtle Moon
Second Nature
Practical Magic
Local Girls
The River King
Blue Diary
For Children
Fireflies
Horsefly
Aquamarine
To E. B.
TONIGHT, THE HAY in the fields is already brittle with frost, especially to the west of Fox Hill, where the pastures shine like stars. In October, darkness begins to settle by four-thirty and although the leaves have turned scarlet and gold, in the dark everything is a shadow of itself, gray with a purple edge. At this time of year, these woods are best avoided, or so the local boys say. Even the bravest among them wouldn’t dare stray from the High Road after soccer practice at Firemen’s Field, and those who are old enough to stand beside the murky waters of Olive Tree Lake and pry kisses from their girlfriends still walk home quickly. If the truth be told, some of them run. A person could get lost up here. After enough wrong turns he might find himself in the Marshes, and once he was there, a man could wander forever among the minnows and the reeds, his soul struggling to find its way long after his bones had been discovered and buried on the crest of the hill, where wild blueberries grow.
People from out of town might be tempted to laugh at boys who believed in such things; they might go so far as to call them fools. And yet there are grown men who have lived in Jenkintown all their lives, and are afraid of very little in this world, who will not cross the hill after dark. Even the fire fighters down at the station on Main Street, courageous volunteers who have twice been commended for heroism by the governor himself, are always relieved to discover that the fire bells are tolling for flames on Richdale or Seventh Street—any location that’s not the hill is one worth getting to fast.
The town founder himself, Aaron Jenkins, a seventeen-year-old boy from Warwick, England, was the first to realize that some localities are accompanied by bad luck. Jenkins built his house in the Marshes in the year 1663. One October night, when the tide froze solid and refused to go back to sea, he received a message in his dreams that he must flee immediately or be trapped in the ice himself. He left what little he owned and ran over the hill, even though there was a terrible storm, with thunder just above his head and hailstones the size of apples. In his journal, exhibited in the reading room at the library, Aaron Jenkins vows that a thousand foxes followed on his heels. All the same, he didn’t stop until he reached what is now the town square, where he built a new home, a neat, one-roomed house that is currently a visitors’ center where tourists from New York and Boston can pick up maps.
Those foxes who chased after Aaron Jenkins are all but gone now. Still, some of the older residents in the village can recall the days when there were foxes in every inch of the woods. You’d see them slipping into the henhouses, or searching for catfish out by Olive Tree Lake. Some people insist that every time a dog was abandoned, the foxes would befriend the stray, and a breed of odd reddish dogs with coarse coats came from these unions. Indeed, such dogs were once plentiful in these parts, back when farms lined Route 22 and so many orchards circled the village that on some crisp October afternoons the whole world smelled like pie.
Twenty-five years ago, there were still hundreds of foxes in the woods. They would gather and raise their voices every evening at twilight, at such a regular hour people in the village could set their watches by the sound. Then one dreadful season the hunting ban was lifted, and people went crazy; they’d shoot at anything that moved. Most folks still regret what went on; they truly do. For one thing, the rabbits in these parts are now so fearless you’re likely to see them sitting on the steps to the library, right in the middle of the day. You’ll catch them in your garden, helping themselves to your finest lettuce and beans. You’ll spy them in the parking lot behind the hardware store, comfortable as can be on a hot afternoon, resting in the shadow left by your car. They’re pests, there’s no doubt about that, and even the most gracious ladies on the library committee find themselves setting out poison every now and then.
There are so many rabbits along the back road to Fox Hill that even cautious drivers risk running over one. This, of course, is simply one more reason to avoid the hill. March Murray, who was raised here, agrees that it’s best to stay away, and she has done exactly that for nineteen years. All this time she has lived in California, where the light is so lemon-colored and clear it is almost possible to forget there are other places in the world; these woods for instance, where one could easily mistake day for night on an October afternoon, where the rain falls in such drenching sheets no birds can take flight. It is exactly such a day, when the sky is the color of stone and the rain is so cold it stings the skin, that March returns home, and although coming back was not in her plans, she is definitely here of her own free will.
The simple act of returning, however, doesn’t mean she’s a local girl right off, that she would, for instance, still know every shopowner in town by name as she once did. In the time she’s been away, March has certainly forgotten what rain can do to an unpaved road. She used to walk this way every day, but the ditches are much deeper than she remembers, and as they drive over branches tossed down by the storm, there is an awful sound, like the crunching of bones or a heart breaking. The rental car has begun to lurch; it strains all the way uphill and sputters each time they have to traverse a deep puddle.
“We’re going to get stuck,” March’s daughter, Gwen, announces. Always the voice of doom.
“No, we won’t,” March insists.
Perhaps if March hadn’t been so intent on proving her point, they wouldn’t have. But she steps down hard on the gas, in a hurry as usual, and as soon as she does, the car shoots forward into the deepest ditch of all, where it sinks, then stalls out.
Gwen lets out a groan. They are hubcap-deep in muddy water and two miles from anywhere. “I can’t believe you did that,” she says to her mother.
Gwen is fifteen and has recently chopped off most of her hair and dyed it black. She’s pretty anyway, in spite of all her sabotage. Her voice has a froggy quality from the packs of cigarettes she secretly smokes, a tone she puts to good use when complaining. “Now we’ll never get out of here.”
March can feel her nerves frayed down to dust. They’ve been traveling since dawn, from San Francisco to Logan, then up from Boston in this rental car. Their last stop, to see to the arrangements at the funeral parlor, has just about done her in. When March gets a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror, she frowns. Worse than usual. She has always had very little appreciation for what others might consider her best features—her generous mouth, her dark eyes, her thick hair, which she has colored for years to hide the white streaks which appeared when she was little more than a girl. All March sees when she gazes at her reflection is that she’s pale and drawn and nineteen years older than she was when she left.
“We’ll get out of here,” she tells her daughter. “Have no fear.” But when she turns the key the engine grunts, then dies.
“I told you,” Gwen mutters under her breath.
Without the windshield wipers switched on, it’s impossible to see anything. The rain sounds like music from a distant planet. March leans her head back against the car seat and closes her eyes. She doesn’t have to see to know that directly to her left are the fields of Guardian Farm and the stone walls where she used to balance, arms out, ready for anything. She truly believed that she carried her own fate in the palm of her hand, as if destiny was nothing more than a green marble or a robin’s egg, a trinket any silly girl could scoop up and keep. She believed that all you wanted, you would eventually receive, and that fate was a force which worked with, not against you.
March tries the engine again. “Come on, baby,” she says. This road is not a place where she wants to be stuck. She knows the nearest neighbor too well, and his is a door she doesn’t plan to knock upon. She pumps the gas and gives it her all and there it is at last: the ignition catches.
Gwen throws her arms around her mother’s neck, and for now they both forget all the fighting they’ve been doing, and the reasons why March insisted on dragging Gwen along instead of leaving her at home with Richard. So a mother doesn’t trust a daughter? Is that a federal offense? Exhibit A: birth control pills at the bottom of Gwen’s backpack wedged between the Kleenex and a Snickers candy bar. Exhibit B: pot and rolling papers in her night table drawer. And C of course, the most definitive evidence of all: the dreamy look on any fifteen-year-old girl’s face. C for cause and effect. C for ceaseless trouble, and for cry all night, and for cool as ice to your mother no matter what or when. How could Gwen guess that March knows fifteen inside out; that she knows, for instance, whatever feels most urgent and unavoidable to you at that age can follow you forever, if you turn and run.
“The sooner we get out of here, the better,” Gwen informs her mother. She’s dying for a cigarette, but she’ll simply have to control herself. Not exactly what she’s best at.
March steps on the gas, but the wheels spin them deeper and deeper into the mud. There’s no longer any hope of going forward; in fact, they won’t be going anywhere at all without the help of a tow truck.
“Damn it,” March says.
Gwen doesn’t like the way her mother sounds. She doesn’t like the whole situation. It’s easy to see why tourists don’t usually come here, and why the maps in the visitors’ center are yellow with age. In these woods, autumn brings out ghosts. You may not see them or hear them, but they’re with you all the same. You’ll know they’re present when your heart begins to beat too fast. You’ll know when you look over your shoulder and the fact that there’s no one directly behind you doesn’t convince you that someone’s not there.
Gwen reaches over and locks her door. There aren’t even any streetlights out here, not for miles. If you didn’t know where you were going, you’d be lost. But, of course, Gwen’s mother knows the way. She grew up here. She must know.
“Now what do we do?” Gwen asks.
March takes the keys from the ignition. “Now,” she tells her daughter, “we walk.”
“Through the woods?” Gwen’s froggy voice cracks in two.
Paying her daughter no mind, March gets out of the car and finds herself shin-deep in water. Sloshing through the puddle, she goes around to the trunk for her suitcase and Gwen’s backpack. She’d forgotten how cold and sweet the air is in October. She’d forgotten how disturbing real darkness can be. It’s impossible to see more than a foot in front of your own face and the rain is the kind that smacks at you, as if you’d been a bad girl and hadn’t yet been punished enough.
“I’m not walking through this.” Gwen has gotten out, but she’s huddled beside the car. The mascara she applied so carefully while she waited for her mother behind the funeral parlor is now running down her face in thick, black lines.
March isn’t going to argue; she knows that doesn’t work, and in all honesty, simple logic never convinced her of anything when she was Gwen’s age. People tried to tell her she’d better behave, she’d better take it slow and think twice, but she never heard a single word they said.
March grabs her suitcase, then locks up the car. “You decide what you want to do. If you want to wait here, okay. I’m walking to the house.”
“All right,” Gwen allows. “Fine. I’ll go with you, if that’s what you want.”
Gwen gets her backpack. No way is she staying out here all alone. Not for a million bucks. Now she understands why her mother, as well as her father—who also grew up here, right down the road—never come back. The reason they’re finally visiting is actually pretty horrible; if Gwen allowed herself, she’d have a mini-breakdown right now. She’s shivering so badly that her teeth are actually chattering. Wait till she calls Minnie Gilbert, her best friend, to tell her: My teeth were chattering like a skeleton hanging on a rope, and I couldn’t even have a goddamn cigarette because there I was, right next to my mother All for the funeral of some old woman I’m not even related to.
“Are you okay?” March asks as they make their way down the road.
“Perfect,” Gwen says.
Thursday is the day of the funeral and Gwen may faint, especially if she wears her tight black dress, which is scrunched into a ball at the very bottom of her backpack. Judith Dale was the housekeeper who raised March—whose mother had died when March was little more than a baby—and although Mrs. Dale came out to visit in California once a year, Gwen can no longer picture her face. Maybe she’s blocking it out, maybe she doesn’t want to think about nasty things like death and getting old and being stuck in a horrible place like this with one’s mother.
“Do you think the casket will be open?” Gwen asks. Finally, the rain is easing up.
“I doubt it,” March says. After all, Judith Dale was one of the most private people March has ever known. You could tell Judith anything, you could pour out your soul, and it wouldn’t be until much later, perhaps even years afterwards, that you’d realize she’d never told you anything about herself and that you didn’t even know what her favorite dessert was, let alone who she loved and what she believed in.
Now that the rain is ending, they can hear things in the woods. Mice, probably. Raccoons come to drink from the puddles.
“Mom,” Gwen says when something flies overhead.
“It’s nothing,” March assures her. “An owl.”
Not long ago there were mountain lions roaming these woods, and black bears, who came down to the orchards to eat their fill in October. There were moose who would charge anything that moved. Even when March was a girl, the sky was still so clear children in town were often disappointed to discover they couldn’t reach up and pull the stars right out of the sky.
“Are we almost there?” Gwen asks. Her idea of exercise, after all, is to ride on the back of someone’s Honda.
It is now dusk, that odd and unreliable hour when you see things which don’t exist, at least not in present time. It is almost possible for March to catch sight of the ladder her brother, Alan, left beside those sugar maples. That dark shape in the woods may be the bucket Judith Dale used to collect blueberries. And there, by the stone wall, is the boy March once loved. Unless she is very much mistaken, he has begun to follow her. If she slows down, he’ll be beside her; if she’s not careful, he’ll stay for good.
“Why are you running?” Gwen complains. She’s out of breath, trying her best to keep up with her mother.
“I’m not running,” March insists. All the same, she gives her daughter a list of reasons to hurry: Call for the rental car to be towed. Phone Richard and let him know his worries were for nothing—they’re fine and have arrived in one piece. Contact the Judge to set up a time when they can go over Judith’s estate. Call Ken Helm, who’s always done odd jobs for the family, and have him check out the house to see if repairs are needed. Surely, there are squirrels in the attic, as there always were at this time of year.
Gwen’s good boots are caked with mud and she’s freezing. “I can see why you and Dad never come back here. It’s disgusting.”
March’s shoulders hurt from carrying her suitcase, or maybe it’s just tension in her neck. This old dirt road is all uphill. Probably she should have taken Route 22 and made a left at what people in town call the devil’s corner. If Richard hadn’t been in the middle of a term and had come with her, she might have gone that way, but she’s not ready to face that piece of road with only Gwen for company. Not yet. She has told both Richard and herself that the past is the past—what happened once doesn’t matter anymore—but if this were true, would she feel as though someone had just run an ice cube down her skin in a straight line?
“I think I see the house,” Gwen announces.
Ken Helm, the handyman, was the one who found Mrs. Dale. He knocked at the door after delivering the bricks needed to repair the chimney early on Monday evening, when the sky was the color of a velvet ribbon falling over the hills. At first he’d thought no one was home, but then the wind had come up and pushed the door open, and there Judith was, in the chair by the fireplace, no longer with us. March’s father’s old friend and partner, Bill Justice, known throughout the commonwealth as the Judge, told March all of this when he phoned the next morning. At least there were no hospital stays, no pain, no heroic measures. And yet this information brings March no comfort, especially because she believes that Bill Justice, who has been an attorney for fifty years and a judge for thirty of those years, was covering the mouthpiece of his telephone in an attempt to conceal the fact that he was crying.
“That’s definitely a chimney.” Gwen squints against the darkness. “I see it now. And there’s a gate.”
On the plane ride here, March had fallen asleep, something she dreads when traveling, since she’s always logy and disoriented after napping. In her dreams, she saw her father, who has been dead for nearly twenty-five years. In March’s dream, Henry Murray was standing in the doorway to their living room, wearing the sweater that March had loved best, the brown wool one with deep pockets, where he always kept peppermint drops. He and Bill Justice were the only lawyers in the village, and although they were partners they participated in the most friendly of feuds concerning which was the more popular.
“Do you want Murray or do you want Justice?” Bill used to joke, and maybe he had to, since Henry Murray was everyone’s favorite. Children would beg for a peppermint drop each time he walked into town, and they’d follow behind, asking for a second and a third. When he died suddenly, while working late at his office, every boy and girl in the village reported smelling mint in the night air, as if something sweet had passed them right by.
Every time she thinks of her father, March experiences a sharp pain in her side. It is astounding to consider how many losses a single individual can sustain. Richard has no family left at all, except for March and Gwen, and March has little more—only her brother, Alan, from whom she’s so estranged it no longer makes sense to consider him blood, which is doubly true for Alan’s son, a boy she’s never even met.
“So this is it,” Gwen says.
They are standing at the gate.
March puts her suitcase down to take a good look.
“I can’t believe you ever lived here,” Gwen says. “Yikes.”
In the dark, the house looks tilted and old. The section that burned down—the original kitchen and dining areas—has been rebuilt as a modest addition. March lived in this house until she was twenty-one. Hers is the window above the porch roof, the one with the black shutters which need to be set back onto their hinges. That was where she spent most of her time in those last years. Waiting at the window.
Is she surprised to find that she is thinking of Hollis now that she sees that window once again? She was only seventeen when he left, but she’d already been in love with him for most of her life. That terrible winter when he went away, when the sky was always the color of ashes and the chestnut tree in the front yard was encased in ice, she began to find white strands threaded through her hair.
Tonight, in that same yard where the chestnut tree still grows, there is something jostling the quince bushes. Gwen moves as close to her mother as she can get; she’s ice, inside and out.
“Mom?”
If Gwen sounds frightened, that’s because she is. This is not what she expected when she agreed to come east with her mother for the funeral. She figured she’d miss a week of school; she planned to sleep until noon every day and eat nothing but candy bars and cereal, full-out enjoying the break from real life. Now, on this dark night, she feels much too far from home. Who is this woman beside her, with the long dark hair and the sad countenance? Gwen, who’s brave enough—or foolhardy enough—to argue with security guards when she’s picked up for shoplifting at the Palo Alto Shopping Center, is actually shaking now. What has she let herself in for? How possible would it be to turn and run for home?
“Look,” March says to her daughter. “It’s only some rabbits.”
Sure enough, several brown rabbits are beneath the hedge of quince. The largest of them comes out, as if to do battle with March and Gwen, as if the entire hill belonged to a creature small enough to fit in a large sunbonnet or a cast-iron pot.
“Scat,” March tells the rabbit. “Go on.” When it doesn’t move she rattles her suitcase, and off goes the rabbit, into the woods. “See?” she tells her daughter. “No problem.”
But Gwen is far from convinced about this place. “Should we go in?” She is whispering, her voice a raspy, breakable thing.
“We’ll have to sleep on the porch if we don’t.”
They both have to laugh at this; it’s not too dark to see that the gutters have sloshed torrents of water over the porch. Not a place you’d want to spend the night, unless you were a centipede, or some other creepy-crawly. March reaches beneath the mailbox, and there is the extra key, wedged underneath, as always.
“You definitely lived here,” Gwen says.
March used to see this same sky every morning; she used to take these porch steps two at a time, always in a hurry, always wanting more. From where they stand, March can see Judith’s garden and instantly, she feels comforted. In spite of everything, some things remain constant. The garden is exactly as it was when March was a child. The spearmint still thrives in weedy bunches, and the scallions, with their sharp bitter scent, haven’t been the least affected by the chilly weather. The last of the season’s cabbages are nestled against the fence, as they always were in October, in neat, tidy rows, like well-behaved green toads.
Maybe she’ll regret coming back, but right now there is nowhere on earth that could feel more familiar. There, in the lower yard, March can make out the orchard, her favorite place of all. The apple trees are twisted, like little old men, their backs turned to the wind. March used to climb these trees every afternoon at this time of year, grabbing at McIntoshes and Macouns, turning the stem of each apple exactly eight times as she recited the alphabet, the way girls do to learn the identity of their true love, making sure to pull the twig free only after she’d reached the first letter of his name.
HE ARRIVED LIKE a bundle of mail, on a gray and windy day. March remembers it perfectly well: It was a Saturday and her father had been away for nearly a week, at a conference in Boston. For much of that time March had been slightly ill, with a low-grade fever and sniffles, and Mrs. Dale had kept her supplied with orange juice and mint tea. March had woken late that day, something she rarely did at the age of eleven, when it seemed that the whole world was right out in front of her, waiting and ready for her alone.
On that Saturday, March’s brother, Alan, normally the late sleeper in the family, was already in the kitchen drinking coffee when March traipsed in, searching for breakfast. Alan, who was ten years older than March, had graduated from Boston University, but he hadn’t done well. He’d registered to audit a few courses at Derry Law School, still hoping to follow his father in his profession, something he would never manage to do.
“We’ve got a boy,” Alan said.
“No we don’t.” Even at eleven, March knew that her brother was a braggart, and was careful not to believe much of what he said.
“Really,” Alan insisted. He had just begun dating Julie, the girl he would later marry, and was more good-natured than usual. He didn’t call March an idiot or a moron the way he usually did, or refer to her by her given name, Marcheline, for spite. “Dad brought him back from Boston. He found him wandering the streets or something.”
“Yeah, right,” March had said. “Liar.”
“Want to make a bet?” Alan said. “How about your allowance for the rest of your life?”
Judith Dale came in with a basket of laundry she had taken off the line. She wore her hair caught up in those days, and she favored slacks and cardigans, along with peace and quiet.
“People can’t just get people,” March said. “Can they?” She always turned to Judith to back her up, but now Judith shrugged. She was hazy about details, but she admitted she had made up the guest bedroom with clean sheets and a quilt that was usually stored in the attic.
March went to the window, but she couldn’t see a thing. Alan came up behind her, eating a piece of buttered toast and flicking the crumbs from his chest.
“He’s right there,” Alan said, pointing toward the orchard.
And true enough, there he was, just beyond the gate. He was thirteen and skinny, with long, dark hair that hadn’t been washed for weeks.
“What a prize,” Alan said, with his usual disdain.
The boy must have felt himself being watched, because he suddenly turned and glared at the window. The clouds were thin and wispy that day, blown about by the wind.
When March waved, the boy was so surprised that he just stood there, blinking. March would have laughed at his discomfort if she hadn’t realized, all at once, that she did not want to stop looking at him.
“Do we get to keep him forever?” March could sense, deep inside, that it was better to whisper.
“God, I hope not,” Alan said.
Out in the orchard, the boy continued to stare at her. The grass hadn’t yet been mowed that season and all the daffodils were closed up tight, to protect themselves from unpredictable weather.
“I’ll take him,” March volunteered.
“Get serious,” Alan had said, but when he walked away March stayed precisely where she was.
“I am serious,” she said out loud, although there was no longer anyone who could hear her. Nearly thirty years later she can still recall the way those words felt in her mouth, how delicious they were, how absolutely sweet. “From now on, he’s mine.”
Everything she knew about him, she learned from Judith Dale. He’d been an orphan in Boston, so poor he’d eaten nothing but crackers and whatever else he could steal. Few people would give him the time of day, let alone a dollar for his supper, but March’s kindhearted father had brought him home.
“And that’s all we know?” They were sitting out on the porch on a fine, blue day, filling up the bird feeders Judith liked to hang from the chestnut tree. “What about his parents? His religion? Does he have brothers and sisters? Are we sure he’s thirteen?”
“You are so nosy,” Judith said. “His name is Hollis and he’s here to stay. That’s all you need to know.”
At first, the new boy wouldn’t eat dinner—not even when there were lamb chops and asparagus, then strawberries for dessert. He wouldn’t look anyone in the eye, including Henry Murray, whom he obviously respected, for Mr. Murray was the one person to whom Hollis didn’t talk back. He was certainly fresh enough to most people, but in an edgy, self-contained fashion. It was the way he looked at you that could make you nervous. It was everything he didn’t say.
After three months, Hollis was still avoiding them all. The less he revealed, the more interesting March found him. She kept wishing she’d run into him, but when she did—once when he was throwing rocks at some invisible target beyond the orchard, and again when they all but crashed into each other in the hall one night en route to the bathroom—she was completely mute in his presence. Since March had always been a great one for talking, this behavior was particularly puzzling.
“Speak up,” Judith Dale would have to tell March whenever Hollis was near, but March couldn’t oblige. She even took to drinking rainwater, which she had overheard Mrs. Hartwig, a matron who worked in the school cafeteria, vow was a sure cure for a tongue-tied child.
Still, Hollis and March hadn’t spoken, not even to ask the other for bread and butter at suppertime. And then one day in the summer, she got her wish. It was July, March believes, or maybe the first week of August. At any rate, it was brutally hot and had been for ages. March had been going barefoot and the soles of her feet were black. She was pouring a glass of Judith’s mint iced tea for herself when she saw the dragonfly pass by overhead. It was larger than the ones you usually saw skimming over the flat surface of Olive Tree Lake, and so blue March had to blink. She followed the dragonfly into the living room, where it perched on the drapes, and there was Hollis, in her father’s chair, reading one of Henry Murray’s textbooks, a complicated treatise which concerned homicide.
“I want to catch that dragonfly,” March said.
Hollis stared at her. His eyes were absolutely black. “Well, good for you,” he finally answered.
The dragonfly was beating its iridescent wings against the fabric of the drapes.
“You have to help me.” March was amazed at how sure of herself she sounded, and maybe Hollis was as well, because he put his book down and came over to help.
In a panic, the dragonfly tried to get away; it banged into the window glass, and then, truly desperate, twisted itself into the long strands of March’s hair. March could feel the dragonfly, almost weightless; she could still feel it after Hollis had plucked it from her tangled hair. Hollis shoved the window open and let the dragonfly outside, where it disappeared immediately, as if swallowed by the sky.
“Now are you happy?” Hollis asked March.
He smelled quite strongly of soap, since Mrs. Dale had insisted he take a shower each day, but also of some other scorching scent, which March would later come to believe was anger.
“No. But I will be soon,” March told him. She took him into the kitchen and got out two tubs of pistachio ice cream. They consumed a pint apiece, and by the time they were done they were shivering, even though the heat was as sweltering as ever. March can still remember how cold her tongue felt, from all that ice cream.
“You’d better stay away from him,” Alan warned March. He relayed some ugly rumors: That Hollis had murdered someone and had then been released into their father’s custody. That his mother was a prostitute who’d been murdered herself. That March had better lock away what few valuables she had—a silver comb left to her by her mother, and a gold-plated charm bracelet—since Hollis was most definitely a thief.
March knew it was jealousy that drove her brother. When Henry Murray introduced Hollis as his son, Alan always turned pale. Alan had never gotten along with his father, and had disappointed him in every way, and now he’d been replaced by someone who hadn’t known what shampoo was and still didn’t have the faintest idea of how to behave in company. At dinner parties or on holidays, Hollis would sit there reading from one of those miserable law texts, and he wouldn’t answer when spoken to; the only people he paid any attention to were Henry Murray and March.
“Why don’t you go someplace where you’re wanted?” Alan asked Hollis.
“Why don’t you shut up?” Hollis said right back, and he didn’t even bother to look at Alan, who was eight years older and a full-grown man, despite his foolish ways.
Alan took every opportunity to humiliate Hollis. In public, he treated Hollis as though he were a servant; at home he made certain the boy knew he was an outcast. Often, Alan would sneak into Hollis’s room, where he’d do as much damage as possible. He poured calves’ blood into Hollis’s bureau drawers, ruining Hollis’s limited wardrobe, knowing full well Hollis would rather wear the same clothes every day than admit defeat. He left a pile of cow manure in the closet, and by the time Hollis figured out where the stench was coming from, everything Henry Murray had given him, the books and the lamps and the blankets, had been contaminated by the smell.
The kinder Henry Murray was to Hollis, the more bitter Alan grew. During that first winter when Hollis was with them, Henry Murray came home from a conference in New York with gifts for all. He presented March with a thin gold necklace and both boys with beautiful pocketknives, made of steel and mother-of-pearl. Alan had botched his classes at the law school, and now the fact that he and this creature he’d had foisted upon him were being treated equally, like brothers in fact, sent him sulking. By the time they sat down for dinner that night, Alan was steaming with rage.
“He’s too young for a knife,” Alan told his father. “You’d never let me have one at his age. He can’t be trusted with it.”
“You’ll be fine,” Henry Murray said warmly, ignoring Alan in order to address Hollis, who sat to his left.
“God, you are blind,” Alan proclaimed. It was Judith Dale’s day off, but she had left them their dinner. They were having roast chicken and potatoes and green beans, but now Alan pushed his plate away, upsetting his water glass. “No one in his right mind would give him a weapon. You have to be crazy.”
If there was one thing Henry Murray couldn’t stand, it was a man who was not fair, and that was what his son seemed to be. Hollis said nothing in his own defense, and that’s what March couldn’t bear to see: The way he wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. The way he seemed to fold up inside himself, going farther and farther inside, until the part of him having dinner at their table was only the smallest corner of his soul.
“Shut up, Alan,” March said. “You’re the one who’s crazy.”
March was sitting to her father’s right, and he now put his hand on her arm. “I don’t want you to talk like that,” he told her. “Not to Alan. Not to anyone.”
Hollis still hadn’t touched his food. He was staring at his plate, but March had the sense that he was watching everything. “You’re just jealous,” she told Alan.
Alan gave a short trumpeting laugh. He nodded toward Hollis. “Of that?”
Henry Murray put down his knife and his fork. “Leave the table,” he said.
“Me?” Alan truly was shocked. “You want me to leave?”
“Come back when you can act decently,” Henry Murray said, and it was clear, from his tone, that he didn’t expect such an occurrence anytime soon, certainly not that evening.
Alan got up so hastily that his chair fell with a clatter behind him, sideways on the floor. March had been staring at Hollis all this time, so she noticed that he now proceeded to eat his supper. He cut his food carefully; he looked back at her and didn’t even blink. March was possessed by the giddiest feeling. She would make Hollis laugh; she would see if she could. She crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” her father said to her.
March hadn’t imagined her father catching her. “Nothing,” she quickly told him.
When she looked at Hollis, she saw that if she hadn’t gotten a laugh out of him, then at least she’d gotten a grin.
“She wasn’t doing anything,” Hollis agreed.
“That’s good to hear.” Henry Murray finally turned his attention to his food. “One rude child is more than enough.”
Alan should have been too grown-up for games of revenge, he should have set his mind to finding a job or studying for his classes, but after that dinner he went after Hollis wholeheartedly. He waited for the time to be right, and at last, on a cold winter day, when a beautiful light snow was falling, Alan and some of his cronies captured Hollis on the path which led to Olive Tree Lake. Staked out long enough to have ice form around their nostrils, fueled by six-packs of beer, these friends of Alan’s were ready to beat someone senseless. They tackled Hollis and spat in his face. They held him down and took turns hitting and kicking him, usually in the ribs, carefully aiming with their fists and their boots.
The horizon was gray that day, and crows were circling in the sky. Alan and his friends hit Hollis until his nose and mouth gushed with blood. They wanted him to call for them to stop, to beg for mercy, to cry, but he did none of these things. He closed his eyes, so that he wouldn’t accidentally be blinded by one of their punches. He cursed them so deeply inside his mind that his expression revealed nothing. There was blood seeping into the snow, and from the other side of the lake came a droning sound, as Mr. Judson, who owned so much land up there, rode his snowmobile through the woods.
Finally, when they had tired of beating him, Alan and his friends tied Hollis to a tree, where he stayed until dark, never once calling out. When he didn’t show up for dinner, Alan took the opportunity to call him irresponsible and thoughtless. When he still hadn’t shown up at nine, March went looking for him. By the time she found him, Hollis was burning with fury and embarrassment. March cut the ropes with the mother-of-pearl pocketknife she knew he kept in his pocket, while Hollis kept his face averted.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” he said when she was through.
There were bloody, red marks on his wrists where they’d tied the knots too tight.
“I don’t,” March had said, and that was the truth. Even then, it was Alan she’d felt sorry for; for Hollis she felt something entirely different from pity. “I know Alan did this. Tell on him. I’ll say I saw it all.”
“But you didn’t,” Hollis said. He wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hands, then rubbed snow on his cheeks and hands. His coat had been ripped off, and now he tore at his shirtsleeve. “You didn’t see this either.” He motioned for her to hand back the knife; he took it in his left hand. Quickly, deeply, he cut a long gash up his right arm.
“Stop that!” March said.
Ignoring the wound he’d inflicted, Hollis stood up and threw the ropes Alan and his friends had tied him with as far as he could, so that they disappeared into a distant drift of snow. After that, they walked back home, a trail of blood behind them. Halfway home, Hollis’s teeth started chattering, even though his coat was thrown over his shoulders; when they reached the front door and were at last safely inside the warm hallway, he collapsed.
Henry Murray drove them to St. Bridget’s Hospital, where twenty-three stitches were needed to close up the gash in Hollis’s arm.
“Who did this?” Henry Murray demanded to know as he and March sat in the waiting room. ‘Was it Alan?”
March stared at the floor and could not bring herself to answer, and this response her father took to be a definitive yes.
That night, Henry Murray informed Alan that if he wished to continue living in his house, he would have to treat Hollis with respect. Moreover, he would have to write a letter of apology, and, out of his own funds, he would have to pay for the hospital bill, along with a new coat, since Hollis’s had been ruined. Alan’s knife, of course, was confiscated, in spite of his many denials.
“Don’t add liar to your list of credentials,” Henry Murray said, and after that Alan stopped proclaiming his innocence.
That night, March couldn’t sleep. She went to the kitchen for a glass of milk, and on her way back to her room, she stood outside Hollis’s door, then knocked and pushed the door open. He was in bed, but not yet asleep. March stepped inside and closed the door behind her. She could see by the moonlight reflecting off the snow in the yard. Hollis’s arm was bound with white cloth.
“You know why I had to cut my right arm?” Hollis asked. He had carefully thought it out while tied to the tree. “So no one would think I did it to myself.”
“How did you make yourself do it?” March asked. She sat on the bed to get a better look at his arm. “Didn’t it hurt?”
“That’s a stupid question.”
Hollis had that mean edge in his voice, and March might have turned and left, if she hadn’t then realized that he was crying. She stretched out beside him, her head on the pillow, while he cried. She stayed there a long time, watching him, and that was how she found out just how much it hurt.
She remained with him until he fell asleep, and although they never spoke of that night, or the fact that she had been there beside him in bed, they became allied in all things. Whenever some schoolmate wanted March to come visit, or if her father insisted she spend time with girls her age—his partner’s daughter, Susanna, for instance—March suffered through the social engagement, counting the minutes until she could be with Hollis. Sometimes she made excuses, she said she was feverish or sick to her stomach, and she ran all the way home to Fox Hill.
She especially remembers the summer when her father died, when she was fourteen. At night the moon seemed huge, the silver moon of August that rises when the hermit thrush begin to appear in gardens. That year, the peepers in the woods had gone wild. They called from the far-off shores of Olive Tree Lake and from every puddle in the yard. They clambered into the garden, where Judith’s mint grew, and sang all night long, a muddy refrain that made it difficult to sleep. Whenever March closed her eyes, she heard the peepers, like a living pulse, the background of hot August nights so black and deep they carry you far from peaceful rest and dreams.
Hollis would already be out there, on the flat part of the roof, whenever she climbed through her window. They had to be quiet, so as not to wake anyone. They kissed with their eyes closed at first, as if that would make for more silence and secrecy. March told no one, not Mrs. Dale whom she’d always confided in, or pesky Susanna Justice who always demanded to be apprised of the most intimate details of everything. It was the sort of summer when it was not possible to notice the existence of anyone other than yourself and the one you loved, and so March was doubly stunned when Alan woke her one morning, shaking her by the shoulder, announcing that their father had died.
Although Henry Murray had drawn up hundreds of wills for his clients, he hadn’t redrafted his own since before March was born. Alan, therefore, inherited all of Fox Hill. Mrs. Dale stayed on, of course, and March’s expenses were all paid for, but Hollis was sent to live in the attic. Now Alan had his chance to do as he pleased, and he began by writing up a weekly bill which charged Hollis for board and lodging. It took Hollis two years straight after high school before he could pay Alan Murray back, but he did it. He worked at the bakery on Main Street, putting in a full day before noon, and then headed over to the Olympia racetrack, where he learned that a man had a chance to double his money if he was willing to wager what he already had. On evenings and weekends, he drove a truck for the Department of Public Works, spreading salt on the roads in winter, cutting down branches and gathering trash from Route 22 when the weather was fine.
The weather happened to be exceptionally fine on the day that he left. March would soon graduate from high school, and she remembers that while she and Judith Dale were talking about her future, which seemed completely wide open back then, they had decided to clean the windows, the better to see the gorgeous blue sky. No matter how many possibilities March came up with—college, travel, a job in Boston—all futures included Hollis, that much was certain.
When Hollis came in to announce he had quit all his jobs, he felt he had never before been free. He had worked off his debt to Alan with the help of a gelding named Sandpaper who had run a race with twenty-five-to-one odds at the Olympia track, and who had amazed all bettors, including Hollis, by managing to win. Now, he could walk away, clean and clear, ready to start over. It was the most important day in Hollis’s life: the moment he’d been working toward ever since Henry Murray had died, but March didn’t realize this. Lately, Hollis had been working so much she’d gotten used to missing him; she’d begun to look elsewhere for companionship. She was going next door to the Coopers’ for dinner; she’d become friendly with the daughter, pale red-haired Belinda, and was thinking about nothing more than what she might wear that evening. Her blue dress came to mind, and so she didn’t have room to pay as much attention to Hollis as she might have.
“Would you rather be there with them or here with me?” Hollis demanded to know.
His question had taken her by surprise as she was choosing a pair of earrings from her jewelry case, and she answered too slowly—she must have, because he grabbed her, something he’d never done before.
“Stop it,” she said to him. He’d always been jealous of her friendship with the Coopers, but she’d never paid much attention, until now. He was twisting her wrist; as soon as she shook free, she backed away. “Leave me alone,” she said.
March had never spoken to him this way, and her irritation came as a shock to both of them. It was just that he wanted so much from her; she never had a minute to think.
“Are you making a choice?” Hollis said to her then.
“No,” March had spat back, not considering how easily hurt he could be. “You are.”
It is always a mistake to tell someone, Don’t you dare walk out that door, and a far worse mistake to actually cross the threshold and walk out on someone you love. Ever since that day, March has wondered what she could have done differently: Stayed home from the Coopers’? Thrown her arms around him? Admitted that all day long she’d been planning her future with him? Halfway through dinner, she sensed how wrong she’d been; she left and ran all the way home, but it was already too late.
After he’d gone, she waited upstairs at her window, day after day, week after week. There were no letters, not even a postcard, and by the time March graduated from high school, she no longer bothered to walk down the drive to check the mailbox. Still, each spring the doves who nested in the chestnut tree in the yard returned, and March took that as a sign of Hollis’s loyalty and his love. The girls she’d gone to school with went off to college, or took jobs in the village, or married boys they loved, but March stayed by her window, and before she knew it the pane of glass had become her universe, the empty road her fate.